The thought of homeschooling can feel overwhelming. And parents especially worry about Montessori homeschooling and how much it will cost. I’ve learned a lot from homeschooling my kids through high school, doing lots of online research and work, and now helping with my grandkids’ education. There really are ways to homeschool without spending a fortune.
Homeschooling options are almost unlimited now, so you can even homeschool for free. While completely free usually isn’t the best option, you can homeschool inexpensively.
Of course, if inexpensive options feel overwhelming to you, you can save yourself time and avoid hassles by spending more and purchasing more ready-made curriculum. You just have to find the right balance between saving money and saving time. They’re both valuable. I found it best to choose ways to save money that fit my style of teaching and my kids’ learning styles.
Disclosure: This post contains some affiliate links (at no cost to you).
Here are some ways to save money that can be used according to what feels right for you and your family:
Read reviews and talk to other homeschoolers before purchasing curriculum.
This is extremely helpful, and you can do a Google search of almost any curriculum to find reviews online. There’s even a site called Homeschool Reviews. I attended homeschooling conferences and read books like Cathy Duffy’s 100 Top Picks for Homeschool Curriculum. Now Cathy Duffy has lots of reviews online, too, at Cathy Duffy Reviews. If you Google homeschool reviews you’ll find links to many more homeschool reviewers as well.
There are wonderful homeschool groups online. You’ll find many homeschool Facebook groups to choose from.
There are some Montessori material reviews in the comments section of this post and a linked post: Where to Buy Montessori Materials. Many of the Montessori materials listed are inexpensive versions that are suitable for home use or are inexpensive printables that can be used to create attractive and effective Montessori materials. I also have many resource reviews of Montessori materials and Montessori-friendly materials.
With homeschool reviews, it’s important to keep in mind your homeschooling orientation and the homeschooling orientation of the reviewers. Some curriculums that were highly recommended wouldn’t have worked at all for me or my family. We needed a strong emphasis on Montessori and/or unit studies, “living books,” and hands-on learning. A standard textbook – no matter how good – wasn’t the best choice for us.
If you do your research, you’re more likely to find a curriculum that works for you and can be supplemented easily with materials found online that you can use to add life to your curriculum. That beats buying lots of different curriculums, trying to find the best one. It’s always possible to get the wrong curriculum anyway, but that’s probably part of homeschooling and education in general.
Recycle your homeschool materials.
As much as your children’s learning styles will allow it, pass your curriculum down to your younger children or sell it online or at a homeschool curriculum fair. Even though I only had two children, I was able to pass down most of my son’s homeschool materials to my daughter.
I actually had a whole Montessori school full of materials that I was extremely lucky to pass on to my children before selling. When they were older, I had a huge sale with invitations to Montessori school owners along with the general public.
Now, you can sell used Montessori materials and almost any homeschooling materials online. You can find groups for selling your used materials on Facebook.
When your children are young, many materials can be used, put away for a while, and reintroduced again later. Many Montessori materials can also be stored and reused when your children are older. Cards and activities with zoological classifications, leaf shapes, constellations, etc., are great as supplements later on.
Get ideas and resources from homeschool blogs.
Homeschool Resources and Encouragement has lots of ideas from my family’s homeschool experience and more.
How to Set Up a Montessori Homeschool Classroom has links to many Montessori homeschooling resources and ideas from around the blogosphere.
Montessori-Inspired Unit Studies + Seasonal and Holiday Activities has lots and lots of ideas for activities that can be prepared inexpensively at home and are helpful whether or not you’re a Montessori homeschooler.
If you’d like unit study resources organized by character traits, I’ve done that in my character education unit studies post at my Bits of Positivity blog. They still include the same resources but are organized differently.
Use free or inexpensive printables and make your own materials.
I used to create Montessori trays totally by hand, which I loved to do. Unfortunately, I’m terrible at drawing and had to find materials to trace or cut out. Today, it’s easy to create professional-looking activity trays in very little time by downloading free printables. You can typically find hands-on objects to go with the trays inexpensively around the house, at garage sales, in thrift stores, at hobby stores, or on Amazon.
Free Montessori Materials Online has lots and lots of free Montessori printables.
Note: If you subscribe to my newsletter, you’ll have access to our Living Montessori Now resource library with 50 themed Montessori printable packs and a new one each month!
The Ultimate List of Free Printables for Preschool Activity Trays has many other free printables that work for Montessori-style trays even if they weren’t originally planned as Montessori materials.
More Than Nine Years’ Worth of Free Printables and Montessori-Inspired Activities has links to a huge number of free printables along with ideas for preparing activities using free printables.
You can also make many materials that don’t require printables. There are links to many ideas for making your own Montessori materials in this post: How to Make Your Own Montessori Materials. Because Montessori materials can be expensive to purchase, you can make many of your own or substitute materials that will achieve the same purpose.
Shop sales (and bundles) and find materials that are affordably priced.
I love shopping sales, especially bundle sales. I try to feature some of the best bundle sales at least a few times during the year. If you subscribe to my weekly newsletter, you’ll find out when I’m a contributor and/or affiliate for a bundle.
The Montessori at Home! eBook and Materials Bundle Available Exclusively on Living Montessori Now!
You can get a free download of 51 sample pages from Montessori at Home eBook by clicking here! (This includes information on John’s simplified Montessori reading sequence.)
Here’s the direct link to the purchase page for the Montessori at Home! Materials Bundle,which includes the Montessori at Home eBook AND over $60 worth of Montessori Print Shop materials to go with the book (now only $14.95)!
- Phases of the Moon (3-part cards & chart)
- Animals of the Continents
- Continents 3-Part Cards
- Land & Water Form Photo Book
- World – Control Maps, Masters and Labels
- Moveable Alphabet – Print – (includes full instructions)
- Sentence Cards – Step 1 – Set 1
- Word and Picture Cards – Step 1 – Read Pictures
- 1-100 Math Series
- Geometric Matching Cards
- Geometric Solids 3-Part Cards – Blue
- Skeleton Nomenclature Cards
- Tree Nomenclature Cards
- Phonics Sound and Picture Sorting
- Association of Objects
- What Does Not Belong
- The Five Senses
- Plant or Animal?
- Animals and Their Names
- Color Grading Cards
- Metal Insets – Shape Outlines
I also try to have sales in the Living Montessori Now shop once a month or so. And I price the shop materials very reasonably even without a sale!
Find deals for elementary ages in addition to preschool and kindergarten.
Check out my Montessori elementary category for posts with free resources and deals specifically for Montessori elementary homeschooling.
If you want general homeschooling information and free deals for a variety of ages, check out sites such as Free Homeschool Deals, Homeschool Share, and Mom for All Seasons.
AmblesideOnline has a free online curriculum for kindergarten through grade 12 that’s designed to be as close to the curriculum Charlotte Mason used.
Here are posts with links to free worksheets that are generally used for elementary and older:
Free Homeschooling Worksheets from Homeschool-Curriculum.org
Free Math Worksheets from HomeschoolMath.net
Oklahoma Homeschool (free homeschool forms and worksheets by Cindy Downes)
Be creative for high school and beyond.
Consider what type of high school experience is best for your student. Here are links to posts about what we used: Homeschool High School. Using AP courses and concurrent high school/college courses can give your high schooler a head start on college and take care of high school credits at the same time. My daughter loved being a concurrent high school/college student for a couple of courses.
A very helpful resource is the free online Khan Academy. It’s mission is “to provide a free, world-class education to anyone, anywhere.”
If you’d like to know more about Khan Academy, watch this video:
Academic Earth has “online courses from the world’s top scholars.”
MIT OpenCourseWare is a web-based publication of “virtually all MIT course content. OCW is open and available to the world and is a permanent MIT activity.”
There are more resources at Top Ten Tools for a Free Online Education from Lifehacker.
What are your favorite ways to save money while homeschooling?
Learn more about my eBook Montessori at Home or School: How to. Teach Grace and Courtesy!
The Montessori at Home! eBook and Montessori at Home! eBook and Materials Bundle are AMAZING resources! You can learn more about them here. Buy them in the Living Montessori Now shop.
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great resources – thank you. I used printables a lot and we loved making lapbooks which was a very inexpensive way of presenting projects. I was also able to buy a couple of second hand curriculums which was wonderful; I don’t mind half price in exchanged for a few curled corners of the page!
Thanks, Mrs Green! I’m a real advocate of recycling homeschooling materials. I loved the second-hand clothing I received from others as a child, and it only seems right to pass on used curriculum (and buy used curriculum if it’s available). 🙂
Wonderfully full of inexpensive and free homeschool sources! This is a great post to keep on hand for families teaching at home.
Thanks so much for your kind comment! I hope others find it helpful! 🙂
What a wealth of resources! This is one for the bookmark bar. Thanks for sharing your experience and creativity!
Thanks so much for your very kind comment! I’m so glad this is helpful for you … I had way too much fun finding all the resources! 🙂
Ok – you just sidetracked me for the past hour going to check out all of the awesome posts and sites that you have listed. Thank you for the help!!
LOL! Thanks, Dionna! I’m always getting sidetracked during my research by all the awesome posts and sites I find in the blogosphere! 🙂
Awesome post!
I’m the queen of “homeschooling on the cheap” he he.
We’ve always used books found at yard sales and book sales. I worked in a grade school for years and took home books and things by the car load from the recycle bin at the end of the school year. You wouldn’t believe the textbooks, workbooks, worksheets, and regular reading books that these teachers were throwing away!
We use a lot of internet resources.
We also use the public library. We are fortunate that our library has 2 walls of books and resources dedicated to homeschool parents and educators.
I only have one of 4 children left at home now and she is high school this year. I’ve opened up to save several of your resource websites.
Thanks so much, Marsha! I love that you’re so creative in finding ways to homeschool inexpensively! I’m glad you found some resources here to add to all the awesome things you do! 🙂
Thank you so much for this post. I’m going to be using many of these resources on our homeschooling journey. I was familiar with only a few of them.
We are currently homeschooling with a homeschool charter that gives us money. I’m wrestling with the paperwork vs the money decisions right now. It’s useful for classes, but I’ve been doing our curriculum on our own just fine. I’m always on the lookout for free or inexpensive. Thank goodness for the internet and resources like your blog!
Thanks, Zoie! I love hearing about your experiences with a homeschool charter. I love that there are so many choices for homeschoolers now. The trick is, as always, finding the perfect balance for your unique family! 🙂
Great Links! This is a very resouceful post for me. Thanks a lot for this post, and thank you for the feature I’ll be sure to grab the button:)
Thanks so much for your kind words. I’m glad you’re grabbing the “featured on” badge. I love your blog contributions to the world of Montessori and homeschooling! 🙂
my husband and I have been gettign alset up for homeschooling. thanks for the great ideas;)
Thanks, Heather! Enjoy your homeschool adventure! 🙂
Thanks for such a wonderfully resourceful site! I’m sure I will spend the rest of the evening going through it all. I’m know my readers will love it just as much as I do, so I’ve added a link to you on my site.
Thanks so much, Robin! I really appreciate the link on your site! 🙂
Great post Deb! Love all the resources and all your research. Also thanks for including my blog.
Marcia 🙂
Thanks, Marcia! I love the themes you share each month … I’m happy to send readers your way! 🙂
This is amazing! I was half a paragraph in before I realized I needed to bookmark this to have on hand as a resource. 🙂
I’ve been browsing all the Montessori activity sites you’ve been linking to, and it does seem like a great idea to download and print out the drawings rather than trying to freehand them (I have no fine motor skills, lol). A lot of these things look totally doable for us — they’re like activity bags, just more targeted. And I’m already addicted to activity bags, so I’m primed for these.
Thanks so much again for being such a great resource, Deb! It’s like you read my mind for what we needed right now as we start homeschooling Mikko.
Thanks for your kind comment, Lauren! I’m so happy the timing is right! Montessori-inspired activity trays are much like activity bags … just available on trays on low shelves. I loved finding all the resources, and I hope you find some activities here that are perfect for Mikko! 🙂
Thank you for all those resources! I’m bookmarking this to refer back to when we need some extras around here. I know there are many free resources out there it just takes so much time to find them all-but you’ve done the research for me!
Thanks so much, Lexi! It’s great to hear that my post is helpful for you! 🙂
Another amazing article with so much information, just excellent, Deb, thanks!
Thanks for your very kind words, John! I love what you’re doing with your revised book and website/blog! 🙂
Good information. I did not know about the MIT openware program. For some children homeschooling is the way to go.
Thanks so much! I totally agree … and it’s wonderful that families now can choose what’s best for them, whether it’s school or homeschool. 🙂
Great resources. I’m planning to home school my youngest daughter because she was traumatize and this helps coz i’m quite tight in budget.
Thanks, Mia! I glad this was helpful for you! 🙂
Hi Deb, This is a really helpful post to those of us with limited budgets! Also, thanks for featuring one of my ideas.: )
Thanks for your kind comment, Sheila! And I love sharing your creative and awesome ideas! 🙂
What great resources, thank you! My next question would have been, but where to start? But I see that you’ve already answered that question in your 10/13 post!
Thanks so much for your comment, Rachael! With so many resources, there definitely can be information overload. I’m glad you found my How to Start Using Montessori at Home post! 🙂
I don’t homeschool, but I’m sharing this post on twitter. You’ve shared a lot a useful resources. I like the homeschool sites where parents can read reviews. It’s nice to find out what works before buying.
Thanks so much for sharing my post on twitter, Michelle! A lot of the sites are useful for teachers in schools as well. I’m continually amazed at just how much is available online now! 🙂
MONTESSORY ON A BUDGET FOR HOME SCHOOLING OR AFTER SCHOOL
I dream of a montessory based environment for my still-but-a-dream-child. But the cost of this dream can be huge. The prizes in the official store Nienhuiz can be very salty. To cut the purchases to the very minimum I joted down only the basic elements actually used by dr Montessori.
The montessori basic equiptment listed in the montessory manual by Dorothy Fisher 1913 include:
buttoning frame € 34.00
lacing frame € 34.00
(zipper frame) 47.01
cylinder set € 67.90 x4
long stairs (number rods) 159.00
brown stairs € 139.00
the tower € 99.00
counting boxes with counting sticks € 118.00
mystery bag containing geometric objects € 30.00
color box € 125.00
sound boxes € 105.01
fabric set € 69.00
sandpaperboards € 31.50
plane geometric insets 399
geometric metal inset € 112.50
plane geometric forms cards € 34.50
sandpaper alphabets € 94.00 x2
movable alphabets € 179.00 x2
sandpaper numbers € 27.00
movable numbers € 24.50
all together 2093 euros from Nienhuis!!! This is still a huge sum to invest for me. I went in search for options and found that Bravoeducation offers homeschool kit with C$299.00 (no letters included). Alison’s offers the same homeshool kit with $400.00 (no letters, includes a storage bag).
But the kit contains only:
-Knobbed Cylinders
-Pink Tower
-Brown Stairs
-Color Box
-Mystery Bag
-Number Rods
-sandpaper Numbers
-extra equiptment, mainly mathematical.
I was disapointed to realize the kit does not have many of the basic items.
You can try your luck in Ebay and Amazon:
-Knobbed Cylinders ($50 amazon)
-Pink Tower ($33 amazon)
-Brown Stairs ($60 amazon)
-Color Box ($30 amazon)
-Mystery Bag ($15amazon)
-Number Rods ($25 amazon)
-sandpaper Numbers ($15 amazon)
-buttoning + lacing + zipping (Melissa and Doug Basic Skills Board) 10 dollars amazon
-counting boxes with counting sticks 30dollar ebay
-sound boxes (25 dollars amazon)
-fabric set ($16 amazon)
-sandpaperboards (17 dollar amazon)
-plane geometric insets ($177.80 amazon)
-geometric metal inset (20 dollar ebay)
-plane geometric forms cards (4 dollar amazon)
-sandpaper alphabets (34 dollars amazon)
-movable alphabets (36 dollar ebay)
-movable numbers (13 dollars amazon)
The costs can be brought down making these items yourself:
-mystery bag (even a plastic bag and some common house hold items will do)
-sandpaper numbers and alphabets (using cardboard and sandpaper, scissors and craft knife)
-buttoning lazing zipping (using just any clothes with big buttons and zippers etc)
-fabric set (recycle old clothes)
-geometric forms cards (easy to draw or print yourself)
-movable alphabets and numbers (using cardboard,scissors and craft knife)
-sandpaperboard (using cardboard and sandpaper)
-counting boxes with counting stiks (draw numbers to any containers and get some craft stics or even pensils)
These items can be left out:
-Metal insets (you can use the plane insets for the same purpose)
-brown stairs (because so similar to the number rods)
-sound boxes and color box (consentration on writing and counting)
The purchasabel items would then be:
-Knobbed Cylinders ($50 amazon)
-Pink Tower ($33 amazon)
-Number Rods ($25 amazon)
-plane geometric insets ($177.80 amazon)
The cost in the end would be around 286 dollars.
If the remaining items are replaced with non montessory toys the prize is down to almost nothing:
-unifix ($10 amazon) instead of number rods
-animal nesting blocs ($11 amazon) instead of pink tower
-geometric puzle ($18 amazon) instead of geometric insets
In te end you pay only 39 dollars!!!
Sure it’s not the same as having real montessory products but the main thing is not the equiptment but the montessory ATTITUDE!
Thanks so much for your comment and ideas, Laura! It’s great that you’ve put so much thought into this already! As much as I LOVE Neinhuis materials (and they were perfect when I had a Montessori school), they aren’t practical for homeschooling. I keep publishing new posts with DIY Montessori materials at https://livingmontessorinow.com/tag/diy-montessori-materials/. It’s wonderful that there are so many creative DIY tutorials online now. It’s definitely possible to have a Montessori homeschool without spending a fortune! 🙂
Since I am so new to the world of homeschooling, I’d like to spend the money to have a good system ready for us to use, but I don’t want to waste money. Do you know what’s reasonable to spend on a curriculum?